Source: File: Working
party, with stove pipes, passing a big gun. See an original image at: <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ww1-archive/12214158/Daily-Telegraph-January-29-1917.html>
[Accessed 29 January 2017]
While winter's of
war might wither
The sturdiest soldier,
the wild bite
Of January 1917,
was able to drop
The thermometer
to new bitterness.
P. Gibbs was able
to recall the fall
Of temperature
from '14, '15 and '16
Across Flanders
and France lines,
Where cold had ebbed
into soldiers.
Though with '17
an icy frost took
A bite deeper -
daylight provided
No warmth as night was a locker
In a butcher's
store, to freeze all.
Stillness covered
all with ice, that
Had turned all
into a steely cover;
Sloshing mud of
quagmires, whose
Depths men had
floundered over.
Yet an unsaid
strange beauty lay
Across a
transformed landscape.
Snow capped
trenches glinted
With fine
crystalised snowdrifts.
The sweeping landscape
of shell
Craters as a
frozen sea, peeked
With ice caps, while polished duck
Walks transformed into ice rinks.
Men, cold with
duty, found selves
Stumbling against
other shoulders,
Or tumbling in layers
of snowfall
To leave their crystallised imprints.
'Ice bound
ditches' - fields where
Reels of barbed
wire softly glinted
Silver, in cold light - they provided
A decorative, deceiving danger.
Any stillness was
turned upside
Down by the
bitterest winds, that
Lifted settled
snows into drifts all
To prove 'British
warms' ineffective.
Despite their
promise to protect
The core, cold wind
cuts through
Clothing - to
dance about all noses
And every soldier's
exposed ears.
The bitterest
winds offered little
Escape, even in
the dugouts - the
Trenches, where men huddled
About oil stoves, channeled cold.
About oil stoves, channeled cold.
Outside any waiting sentry had
To struggle to
grip his rifle -
Hardly aware of
what he held;
With gunman and
gun as one.
A reporter's eyes
saw a sentry
Who wore a goatskin
layer -
Frozen hairs as
porcupine's
Quills - cold became like fire.
In the stillness
of deep winter's
Day, any
equivalent sentry over
The German side
could be heard
Pacing the fire
trench, to curse.
They are not so
far away to give
Him sympathy of
cold equality -
'Poor beggar
probably lacking
Warm clothes,' said
the Tommy.
Under goat skins
tied with string,
Tommy doggedly
carried out duty.
Tommy having stuck the wet, now
Stuck out the cold that held them.
The stalwart Tommy,
described
To hold that
stiff upper lip, makes
No moan - yet the
harsh weather
Took its toll on
health of many.
Trench foot had become
blight -
Better managed
when ordered
To massage all feet
with oil and
Change socks on
dry ground.
An almost
impossible task - yet
Trench foot found more sufferers
In the ice, to
slide down as they
Could not stand on frozen mud.
Majority of the
stoutest soldiers
Had ability to stick
to their posts -
In resistance to
maladies from
Cold, to hold on until relief arrived.
Back in the
billets such men may
Go to the Doctor;
'I feel abit queer.'
Diagnosed as suffering trench fever
As others about
also held back.
Reporting to the
MO to tell them
Of same old
trouble - rheumatism -
Yet doctors told of few malingerers,
Amid these steel hardened men.
Extreme of cold was
in existence
Back at home,
where folk had took
To ice skating; but were no such joy
On the France and
Flanders roads.
Men were observed, marching
Daily, their
combined breathing
Exhaling, forming
clouds over
Their thousand
formed heads.
Hard heels
beating out a tattoo
Over iced roads -
many red noses
And ears beneath
steel helmets -
Wrapped in shaggy
'stink' coats.
Their shapes were amusement
Of some staff officers driving past
In their cars, although their fun
Was altogether cut
short by ice.
A month from
Christmas day,
Business took
officer on duty
On long journeys, down lonely
Places, by barren fields of snow.
Nothing about and
far from
Telephones, to
find the freeze
Affected their car, as radiators
And carburettors broke down.
Stretches of
roads shone with
Black ice patches, which caused
Skids into
snowdrifts; abandoned
So lights fade by
failed batteries.
Flanders and
France floundered
Under the bitter
grip of icy January
Temperature ready to
beat records,
As Tommy repeats;
'eh but its cold.'
by Jamie Mann.
Gibbs. P.,1917. Ice-Clad Trenches - Ordeal For Our Men -
Hardest Frost Of The War. The Daily Telegraph, [online] 29 January 1917. P.7. Col.3. Available at: <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ww1-archive/12214158/Daily-Telegraph-January-29-1917.html>
[Accessed: 29 January 2017].
Mann, J., 2016. 100 years Ago - Poems by Jamie Mann. [letter] (Personal
communication, 29 January 2017).
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